I hate to say it, but I’ve seen this coming for a long time, and I’m pretty sure Avis has as well. When I came here in June she had told me that her main sponsor who gave her $5000 a month had quit paying because his business had started having some trouble. It’s been about 4 months now since he’s given anything and Avis has pretty much milked all her accounts dry trying to keep up with food bills and salaries for the 20 some Peruvians she has working. The school makes enough to just pay the salaries of the teachers but not enough to pay for books, food and all the other miscellaneous. After all, it is just the first year they have been going, and things always take time before they start to turn a profit. From a business point of view it’s a pretty big nightmare, because if she has to shut the school down half way through the year then the parents aren’t going to want to come back next year. The whole idea of a private Christian school is brilliant, it’s a way to let the orphans get a good quality education that they wouldn’t receive elsewhere, a way to spread the word of God to other kids in the city, and a way to generate revenue for the ministry so it can continue to grow. I think in a couple years the school will be able to do just that, but right now it could use a big financial push.
Basically what I’m trying to say is that if you can give a donation to someone I know a good place. There are many ways that you can help, such as sponsoring an orphan. The orphans get to go to the school, but no one pays for them to go so that’s probably the biggest reason the school is having a little trouble right now. Eventually Avis wants to send kids to school from around the community that are sponsored by people in the states. Most of the information you could ever need is on the website (www.goye-ministries.com) a good page to look at is called “Kingdom Investors” . If you want any additional information you can always e-mail me at kpg8xd@missouri.edu or Avis at goyemin@yahoo.com . If you can’t give a donation, you can pray, and Go Ye ministries just like any other ministry could always use prayer.
Next post I plan on having some video footage of the school, so stay tuned.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Saturday.
July 27th 2008,
Yesterday was another long day, but packed full of action. I woke up and picked up my packages from home, beef jerky and snickers bars, then headed over to the orphanage to hang out with the kids before I had to go to Trujillo (again) in the afternoon. We had to go because some kids from a church in Lima that Avis visited wanted to come here for a retreat, but they couldn’t get a bus any further than Trujillo so we had to bring them the rest of the way. Their bus was suppose to arrive at around 8:00 pm so we figured we’d go in the early afternoon and do some much needed shopping. We started to head out at around 1:15 or so, and Oraylio was telling us how he had found a dead rat in the van, so that was one of them. I remembered there were two that I saw. So the three of us hopped into the van and started to pull down the drive when Avis decided to check her papers in the middle consol. When she opened the consol there was a big, stinky Peruvian rat staring up at here. She immediately freaked out, opened the driver side door and jumped out of the moving van. I did some quick thinking and pulled the emergency brake and closed the consol. It was a pretty exciting ordeal. I picked up the dog and placed her in the front seat and opened up the consol, Princessa (the dog) quickly grabbed up the shook the rat to death. I then cleaned the rat blood out of the car, and we were once again on our way.
We got to Trujillo around 2:45 or so and did some shopping in the cheap market until dinner time. Then we went to the big grocery store to buy our groceries, and eat at McDonald’s. It was about 7:45 when the kids called and said their bus was going to be about 2 hours late, long story short we left Trujillo around 12:15 after getting lost because of poor directions and a lot of shouting in Spanish. I didn’t get to my bed until 1:30 and then was woken up at about 6:00 am, by one of the people who came who decided to sweep the sidewalks and water the plants while singing. I’m glad that he wanted to help but I would not have minded if he kept the singing to himself…haha.
Yesterday was another long day, but packed full of action. I woke up and picked up my packages from home, beef jerky and snickers bars, then headed over to the orphanage to hang out with the kids before I had to go to Trujillo (again) in the afternoon. We had to go because some kids from a church in Lima that Avis visited wanted to come here for a retreat, but they couldn’t get a bus any further than Trujillo so we had to bring them the rest of the way. Their bus was suppose to arrive at around 8:00 pm so we figured we’d go in the early afternoon and do some much needed shopping. We started to head out at around 1:15 or so, and Oraylio was telling us how he had found a dead rat in the van, so that was one of them. I remembered there were two that I saw. So the three of us hopped into the van and started to pull down the drive when Avis decided to check her papers in the middle consol. When she opened the consol there was a big, stinky Peruvian rat staring up at here. She immediately freaked out, opened the driver side door and jumped out of the moving van. I did some quick thinking and pulled the emergency brake and closed the consol. It was a pretty exciting ordeal. I picked up the dog and placed her in the front seat and opened up the consol, Princessa (the dog) quickly grabbed up the shook the rat to death. I then cleaned the rat blood out of the car, and we were once again on our way.
We got to Trujillo around 2:45 or so and did some shopping in the cheap market until dinner time. Then we went to the big grocery store to buy our groceries, and eat at McDonald’s. It was about 7:45 when the kids called and said their bus was going to be about 2 hours late, long story short we left Trujillo around 12:15 after getting lost because of poor directions and a lot of shouting in Spanish. I didn’t get to my bed until 1:30 and then was woken up at about 6:00 am, by one of the people who came who decided to sweep the sidewalks and water the plants while singing. I’m glad that he wanted to help but I would not have minded if he kept the singing to himself…haha.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Sunday - Wed.
Sorry I haven’t been updating as much lately. I feel that there’s a lot of routine now with English and all, so I’ll try and just hit the highlights of the past couple of days.
Last Sunday was the day that relatives come and visit the kids. It turned out pretty well. The aunt of Gerson, Johnson, Joel, Betsy and Sibilia came and they were extremely excited that she came. She comes about once every other month. It put Gerson in the best mood he’d been in for a couple weeks, but the older brother Johnson was pretty nonchalant about it. It was an answered prayer that Nelson’s father didn’t come to visit him, because now we think that he can be declared abandoned and be easier to adopt. His father hasn’t visited in over 6 months now, and the last time he visited Nelson was terrified and was crying in horror the whole time his father was there because he still remembered the abuse.
Tuesday night will be remembered as the great rat war. Avis was telling me about some car problems after dinner and I went out to go check the air filter in the car(which was completely caked thanks to all the dirt here) and that’s when I found the real problem…rats, Peruvian rats. There were two of them the size kittens with tails about as thick as my pinky finger. They were making a home out of the van. I went back and told Avis and she gave Matt and me some huge knives. We propped the hood open and started the hunt. I found one and made a quick jab at it, but all I came up with was some hair. We then decided to just put rat poison all over the van. The dog Sparky got a hold of one of the rat’s tails and ripped it in half which sent the mouse into a shrieking frenzy, then I went to bed.
Wednesday was another doctor day. I went to Trujillo again with 6 kids 2 house moms, Randy and Vanessa. After the nearly 2 hour ride there we waited outside on rickety wood benches for another 4 hours to see the doctor. The doctor finally prescribed some inhalers and I think the kids are already feeling better. After the doctors visit it was about 2 and we finally got some food. All the kids were starving because the moms made them fast just incase the doctors needed to take blood. After we ate we went to another hospital to visit one of Randy and Vanessa’s friends so I waited in the car with one of the house mothers and all the kids while they went inside. I fell asleep in the front seat because it had a recliner on it, and I was sharing it with Gerson who also fell asleep. I woke up and then out of no where Gerson woke up and started throwing up, good thing I’ve got the fastest puke reaction time south of the equator because I was able to grab a trash bag that was behind us open it up and put it under Gerson’s mouth in about .05 seconds. Thanks to the fast reaction time only my Jeans and his shirt got covered in vomit. We didn’t get back home till about 5:30, it was a pretty long day.
Last Sunday was the day that relatives come and visit the kids. It turned out pretty well. The aunt of Gerson, Johnson, Joel, Betsy and Sibilia came and they were extremely excited that she came. She comes about once every other month. It put Gerson in the best mood he’d been in for a couple weeks, but the older brother Johnson was pretty nonchalant about it. It was an answered prayer that Nelson’s father didn’t come to visit him, because now we think that he can be declared abandoned and be easier to adopt. His father hasn’t visited in over 6 months now, and the last time he visited Nelson was terrified and was crying in horror the whole time his father was there because he still remembered the abuse.
Tuesday night will be remembered as the great rat war. Avis was telling me about some car problems after dinner and I went out to go check the air filter in the car(which was completely caked thanks to all the dirt here) and that’s when I found the real problem…rats, Peruvian rats. There were two of them the size kittens with tails about as thick as my pinky finger. They were making a home out of the van. I went back and told Avis and she gave Matt and me some huge knives. We propped the hood open and started the hunt. I found one and made a quick jab at it, but all I came up with was some hair. We then decided to just put rat poison all over the van. The dog Sparky got a hold of one of the rat’s tails and ripped it in half which sent the mouse into a shrieking frenzy, then I went to bed.
Wednesday was another doctor day. I went to Trujillo again with 6 kids 2 house moms, Randy and Vanessa. After the nearly 2 hour ride there we waited outside on rickety wood benches for another 4 hours to see the doctor. The doctor finally prescribed some inhalers and I think the kids are already feeling better. After the doctors visit it was about 2 and we finally got some food. All the kids were starving because the moms made them fast just incase the doctors needed to take blood. After we ate we went to another hospital to visit one of Randy and Vanessa’s friends so I waited in the car with one of the house mothers and all the kids while they went inside. I fell asleep in the front seat because it had a recliner on it, and I was sharing it with Gerson who also fell asleep. I woke up and then out of no where Gerson woke up and started throwing up, good thing I’ve got the fastest puke reaction time south of the equator because I was able to grab a trash bag that was behind us open it up and put it under Gerson’s mouth in about .05 seconds. Thanks to the fast reaction time only my Jeans and his shirt got covered in vomit. We didn’t get back home till about 5:30, it was a pretty long day.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Update, and News (it's long)
If you get tired of reading at least read the last paragraph.
Today the electrical engineers came to meet with us. The story behind that is Avis needs more power into the compound where the school is so that she can meet the needs of the school plus the 150 more kids she plans on having in the orphanage. She has been trying to get more electricity since she has been here but they had never let her before, but a couple of weeks ago when some technicians came to fix the line they realized that we need more. The truth is they are running the entire school and all the houses on less electricity than one 3 bedroom house gets in the states. So when the technicians said that they would allow her to get more electricity she was ecstatic. The engineer guys came out and met with us today and told us that it was going to cost 10,000 soles to run the wires. That’s about $3800 that she doesn’t have. See, here in Peru you have to pay for everything that has to do with electricity. The power company just sends power through the lines. So if you need lines ran, you have to pay for it. If the line breaks, you have to pay for it etc. From what I gathered she’s taking out the last of her money that she has and using it to start the process. She said that if God has finally given her a window to have electricity she’s going to take it. She has more faith than I do… that is for sure. I don’t know where she plans on getting the money for next month’s bills because her sponsors haven’t been able to help her in a long time because the economy has gone bad, but she said that if God wants this ministry to continue and for these kids to be here that he will provide. She has also had a lot of other bad stuff happen to her this month, like one of her brothers getting diagnosed with massive amounts of cancer, and some other things that don’t need to be posted on the internet. But yet, she has an amazing amount of peace about her that I just can’t comprehend.
As for the rest of the day, I went over the orphanage and hung out with the kids for awhile. Gerson was feeling terrible today, he had a fever and was having some leg cramps as well, I prayed over him for a good while, and then went into town with Avis and matt to get some dinner, I stopped back by the orphanage on my way back to say good night and he was feeling much better.
Here’s the news that I said I had but I couldn’t share yet a couple of weeks ago. This whole time we’ve been down here Matt and I have been working on a new website for her. The address is www.goye-ministries.com go there, look around and post some feedback. It’s not completely done yet and there’s definitely some fine tuning to be done, but the basic format is ready to go. I’ve been working with Avis to give her ideas on how to generate more funds, because that is something that she is seriously lacking right now. She doesn’t really have groups come at this point, except one from Canada that comes every march for a week, and that is something that I’ve talked with her a lot about. Also, we’ve tried to set up the website so that people can sponsor kids or make donations which are 100% tax deductable .
Today the electrical engineers came to meet with us. The story behind that is Avis needs more power into the compound where the school is so that she can meet the needs of the school plus the 150 more kids she plans on having in the orphanage. She has been trying to get more electricity since she has been here but they had never let her before, but a couple of weeks ago when some technicians came to fix the line they realized that we need more. The truth is they are running the entire school and all the houses on less electricity than one 3 bedroom house gets in the states. So when the technicians said that they would allow her to get more electricity she was ecstatic. The engineer guys came out and met with us today and told us that it was going to cost 10,000 soles to run the wires. That’s about $3800 that she doesn’t have. See, here in Peru you have to pay for everything that has to do with electricity. The power company just sends power through the lines. So if you need lines ran, you have to pay for it. If the line breaks, you have to pay for it etc. From what I gathered she’s taking out the last of her money that she has and using it to start the process. She said that if God has finally given her a window to have electricity she’s going to take it. She has more faith than I do… that is for sure. I don’t know where she plans on getting the money for next month’s bills because her sponsors haven’t been able to help her in a long time because the economy has gone bad, but she said that if God wants this ministry to continue and for these kids to be here that he will provide. She has also had a lot of other bad stuff happen to her this month, like one of her brothers getting diagnosed with massive amounts of cancer, and some other things that don’t need to be posted on the internet. But yet, she has an amazing amount of peace about her that I just can’t comprehend.
As for the rest of the day, I went over the orphanage and hung out with the kids for awhile. Gerson was feeling terrible today, he had a fever and was having some leg cramps as well, I prayed over him for a good while, and then went into town with Avis and matt to get some dinner, I stopped back by the orphanage on my way back to say good night and he was feeling much better.
Here’s the news that I said I had but I couldn’t share yet a couple of weeks ago. This whole time we’ve been down here Matt and I have been working on a new website for her. The address is www.goye-ministries.com go there, look around and post some feedback. It’s not completely done yet and there’s definitely some fine tuning to be done, but the basic format is ready to go. I’ve been working with Avis to give her ideas on how to generate more funds, because that is something that she is seriously lacking right now. She doesn’t really have groups come at this point, except one from Canada that comes every march for a week, and that is something that I’ve talked with her a lot about. Also, we’ve tried to set up the website so that people can sponsor kids or make donations which are 100% tax deductable .
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